they arrived at the first news conference beginning since his reelection. rich edson at the white house with who is there and what they hope to achieve, what message they want to get the president but first the market right now. the only market behaves. it was don down about 78 pointsn the president began speaking and then hit session lows of 124-point as the president warned that we could see a possible recession if the deal on taxes is not reached. investors continued to worry if the u.s. will avoid the dreaded fiscal cliff, let's not point out the most previous minutes. plus retail cannot escape hurricane sandy. sending sales numbers down about

1%. a 4% rise in profits, jumping as much as 32% right now. staples looking good after having higher on all kinds of news. check out what else is soaring today. finally getting an earnings report that people like better-than-expected earnings after the bell yesterday, expected optimistic guidance. the chairman and ceo, 24 hours since those numbers came out, we will ask him if he investors should be expecting more numbers like today and what does he think about the fiscal cliff. what ideas does he have the president right now. and why we dropped 50 points farther from where we were already.

down about 78 points, fell 122 down, now it does not look good. why? >> why? i thought maybe you would say something positive. i think we are just dealing with the aftermath of the election. this is not unexpected. it is the same old rhetoric, the same from two years ago, three years ago. the market has become hostage once again. will or will we resolve the fiscal cliff issue? it will probably drag it out until the 11th hour. liz: will the market remain hostage until the 11th hour? >> in my opinion, absolutely.

just fold your hand and walk away trying to do anything here. nothing to do with the corporate fundamentals, all to do with the politics and really unfortunate, but the games continue. almost as if somebody said let's the games begin. listen to the rhetoric. if you go back to the first two or three minutes of the obama presidency in 2009 when the market rolled off almost 15% which turned out to be the capitulation phase in 2008, was a disaster two or three months and until the tone change in washington, we did not get any help. melissa: we had the word israel

killed military leader. there was video from the air, so looking at oil if it higher. are we not? >> it was kind of strange because earlier in the day, the market did not move. and all of a sudden we rallied based on that move. i heard something else about the pipeline, we were up on that news. going forward, kind of fold your hands and say wait until the end of the year to get an idea of where it would go. i think the high today was 87.06 or thereabouts. i think the market is going to kind of find its way around $85.

liz: oil down 12, 13% year to date, but equally as interested in today and the news out of the federal reserve minutes that may see cuti q. east four. >> do not have that much reaction in equities, but certainly the bond has not been sharing the risk mentality. up pretty much all day. basically they now say numerous governors are thinking there should be something to continue the twist, so realistically that could be an issue. what we are seeing is the bond not very risky. the vix is not going up, so realistically people are not going to the bond or running to the vix, so not many people protecting themselves right now. we had a 1000 points move down in the dow. either they are right, going

much further, or there will be an awful lot of people heading toward the exit if it keeps going. liz: unbelievable. it looks pretty choppy, but does not look good, there is less fear in the certainty. great to see all of you, thank you for joining us and a pretty interesting day. ge, wal-mart, the giants of u.s. business down with president obama to discuss the fiscal cliff. i keep thinking if we got 10 business people in a room we could solve this thing. >> and he has 12 business people in the room. american express, dow chemical, general electric, all different perspectives you got, but some people are pointing out some of the absentee, wall street in particular. essentially saying to continue conversations with wall street executives.

especially when it comes to the fiscal cliff, spoke to a few of them on the way in, no concrete answers on what they hope to address with the president. half the participants involved in some way whether it is the child's counsel for a number of different months, while the meeting is underway hopefully see these guys within the next hour or so. a pretty big day, the president giving a news conference opening oup a bit commission encouraged by some of the news that came out of the news conference specifically willing to look at tax reform, a serious look at entitlement and perhaps even discretionary spending cuts. that is not a commitment to that, but it lays the groundwork perhaps for a deal. the part of the deal must be tax rate increases in families earning more than $250,000 per year. the president says he's willing

to look at a deal, look at revenues as we continue these conversations, and little encouraging to hear what we heard from the white house today, but again a long way to go. liz: exactly. don't expect republicans to adopt my budget, i am ready to compromise. he did not say this my way or the highway. thank you very much. as president obama need meets, t you wish you could be a fly on the wall? how can you prepare your portfolio for a potential fall or a potential deal? so don't freak out, don't run for safety, and you called it, you saw this coming. now it is all we are hearing, but the worst thing to do is run for the hills and be too scared? >> everybody is drawing a line in the sand, everybody is figuring out how fat are i or nw

that line should be. liz: tell us what to do with our money. >> do the opposite of what your brain tells you to do, don't go for safety. what you want to do where growth is difficult to come by and identify the growth companies that can grow regardless of the economic backdrop because everything we are talking about slows growth in the economy. it is the prudent thing to do to get the fiscal house in order but all those things will keep growth somewhat tepid and 22013. liz: two things helping the economy improve, retail sales number did not look that good, but depending on the company certainly. it is not all bad news. give me an example of people running for safety. >> pfizer is the perfect example.

what is so interesting about that? liz: people feel safety, visor, the industry. >> it feels good to own those well-recognized names. you should look for the companies that are growing despite that. it is amazing people feel okay losing money in pfizer because it is pfizer. if you lost money in a company you are less familiar with. liz: some of those very names he feels are the places to be. the long-term bullish stock picker to, the number one moneymaker. 50 minutes before the closing bell rings. remember the '80s when the japanese bought everything american including the rockefeller center? chinese companies are now doing the same thing. plowing money into u.s. assets,

u.s. companies at a record pace. already $8 billion worth this year. can you bank and this trend? make some money off it. the managing director at harris williams to tell you how to invest not necessarily in china, but with china.

liz: we have breaking news, teavana is moving higher, up more than 28%. here is the one-week chart. a huge move to the top for teavana jumping $5.30, 52% jump, what is going on? starbucks plans to buy teavana holdings. the one-year chart, it was a lot better.

starbucks came in and you can see it is pretty good. starbucks is falling just about 2%, if we compare these two, is starbucks and teavana. teavana became a cheaper stock, not bad at all. let's take a quick look at the dow jones industrial, john chambers coming up in the next couple of minutes. lockup expiration date for facebook. nicole petallides, a bit of behavior the stock is having today. nicole: it is true, it gives the opportunity for insiders to sell if they were in on the ipo or the original shares they have the opportunity to get out. it turns out they're not really getting out. on the contrary, double-digit

gains, a great day for facebook, the same day the chief financial officer of the zynga is going over to facebook. that is a winner when you talk about names like farmville and draw something. both are doing extremely well. particularly on a day the dow was down at least 160 points. back to you. liz: am i going to get blamed for this? we will see what we can do in the next about 43 minutes. facing a slowdown at home, china is busy staffing of companies in the united states on track to set a new record, gigantic whale of an asset.

so how can investors play the downturn in china? managing director wrote this report, it is interesting because it is so reminiscent of the japanese in the 80s. the difference is there is time back in, china is slowing down but resourceful enough to come here and say stocks are cheap in the u.s., let us buy them up. >> the chinese are poured a lot of money to th into u.s. econom, however interestingly actually acquiring relatively few companies for control buyouts. if you look back at those in the u.s. were bought by chinese inquirers, that trend will change in the future as chinese companies get increasingly sophisticated on how to acquire u.s. businesses, but there is also the risk of owning a company.

lot of revelatory hurdles and chinese companies and chinese investors have to face in the u.s. liz: there has got to be a way. do you go to the acquirer or the inquiry? >> it depends. if you're an individual investor and you're looking to put money in china, look for u.s. or european companies that have strong companies. on the other hand you can look at a company that might be a logical acquisition, target of a chinese company as an has an opportunity for capital appreciation. liz: the numbers released in october shows chinese activity actually dropped pretty precipitously. and yet what activity they were engaging in is here in the u.s.

the chinese companies that wait a minute, real opportunities are in the u.s. transactional resistance, the chinese are coming to read they were batted away by the government. how do you avoid getting burned by something like that? >> you have to be prepared. i take much longer than they take to go through the process. much more relational, adding companies and the approach appears to be different. liz: can you spot certain sectors of the chinese companies in this particular sector, so which sector are they? >> chinese are trying to get more and more control of natural resources to continue to grow the gdp at the rate they have

historically done, have to get to national resources. technology is important to them. the historical labor making it so competitive in the past is narrowing and they have to do things to make manufacturing more competitive, so those two sectors are ones they're interested in. liz: do you foresee a change in american companies buying chinese companies? >> i think as u.s. sellers are more and more colorful with the chinese, a lot of the concerns by big part of that historically concerned is protecting intellectual property. some of that over time will become less important. liz: listen, this happening, you

can fight the free market, we will be watching it. the managing director. closing bell ringing in 39 minutes. how worried is washington about another downgrade of u.s. credit if they don't reach a deal before falling off the edge of the fiscal cliff? charlie gasparino has a surprising answer coming up next.

liz: here is your fox business market check. utilities sector down nearly 1% today and as you can see with the dow jones industrial getting hammered down 159, close to session lows. here's the spider utilities index, down $0.24. a tough day. check out these stocks hitting 52-week lows.

con ed reporting sandy restoration cost up to $500 million. it had some of the con ed blowing up, a disaster as you can imagine. how worried is congress and the president about another ratings downgrade of the u.s. credit if they fail to put together a budget deal for the mounting debt? goldman sachs had, charlie gasparino. >> i did not hack in, i got a number and i called the number and it worked. it was really good. former democratic senator from louisiana, former republican from mississippi spoke pretty candidly. he did not take questions, goes like the moderator led to a

series of points. they went through the various issues of the fiscal cliff open to deal with it at least in the short term solution, maybe long-term solution of tax reform but then got down to the notion and two lawmakers really care about a ratings downgrade? both of them point blank that right now congress and the president are operating like "who cares." it makes no difference. it is a political call. i would say this one makes a difference and here's why. downgrading us as you know, s&p downgraded us last year. liz: your ago. charlie: feels like yesterday. not much market reaction because we are the tallest midget in a room. liz: everyone flooded treasuries which is completely -- charlie: we are the tallest midget in the ground--in the room. it is a single downgraded the of

the two have a set aaa. people look at the u.s. go with higher ratings. this one will be different. if moody's downgrades, it will no longer be a split rating. it is below aaa. what happens in that respect. all of the desk that is issued by other companies go up because they are priced off of aaa. they're no longer price of of aaa. this will have an impact on the market. the debate does not take this into account. when you think about buying corporate bonds, they are priced off of the aaa treasury and moody's downgrades, there's a

good chance they will. and if they don't do a real deal moving in the direction of a real deal, if they have some direction moving forward in terms of dealing with that, that is where this could kick in. liz: what you heard on the call, the people of goldman in agreement with that. charlie: it was the moderator and lloyd blankfein didn't chime in. senators were pretty much in agreement on everything. they think there will be a stopgap solution. they think the country will deal with tax reform in the coming year. and they think they agreed on this issue about the ratings downgrade. i don't agree with that. liz: if you look back to your ago august, isn't that spark plug already blown, and your split ratings idea means the fact the we have seen it makes

it so much less shocking. charlie: may be shocking but there is a reality that when you are no longer aaa credit, and you are no longer aaa and people -- and predict the future. and it is corporate bonds. municipal-bond soften price of of a spread of of aaa. and that is the difference and has an impact on the market. those financial products have to be repriced. there's a greater degree of uncertainty. the first wasn't so bad because it was this list and you go higher i think will happen, this could be something you as an investor pay attention to. it is no longer split. below triple-a-rated country. and that as a financial impact. liz: he has a number.

he already forgot. liz: 29 minutes before the closing bell, shares of network equipmentmaker cisco climbing today after reporting first quarter profit jumped 18%. and i will speak to john chambers, and what does he think of the fiscal cliff? so much to discuss with john chambers. i always wait until the last minute.

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the fox business brief. of bearish tone on wall street, the markets look into negative territory after the release of minutes from the federal reserve policymaking meeting and president obama's first press conference since his reelection. all three major averages down 1%. on the flip side investors are bullish on t vaughn on news of a buyout. starbucks is buying the company for $620 million in cash to move to transform the tea industry on a global scale. it is a $40 billion global market. tvana made its debut last year. hurricane sandy may cause the insurance industry as much as $25 billion according to disaster modeling company risk management solutions. that figure topped estimates from rival firm world wide. if we continue on countdown to the closing bell with liz claman. liz: as bad as the numbers look

on the lower part of the screen if it weren't for tech giant cisco the dow would look worse. cisco jumping after reporting earnings yesterday "after the bell" with better than expected profit and marked cisco's fourth straight quarter of earnings growth after the networking equipment company, they run the internet and make that hardware stumble back in 2011. cisco chairman and ceo john chambers joins us from san jose, calif.. you're getting a lot of props from analysts about these numbers for really good execution. what is different about this quarter because the time they're still challenging, are they not? >> they are and what is different is what you saw when you interviewed us at the olympics in london. cisco is moving from selling routers and switches to helping governments or companies achieve their key goals. on this quarter we grew shares, exceeded analysts' expectations with 12% growth in earnings,

record revenue, good progress around the world with the exception of europe and europe is not as tough as you here and will get tougher and but you are starting to see the u.s. turned up and we will see this maintained another quarter. that was the key take away in terms of positive note on the quarter in terms of the global economy. liz: you just threw that out the u.s. looked better but which parts? the government part of your business was floundering a little bit but you had better enterprise which is big corporations and that business. what looks strongest for you? >> we would all agree government has been too much so the fact that government business is off and the federal business by 15% even though we will respond to that over time is actually healthy for our country's direction. what was strong was enterprise business which was two quarters the girl wasn't growing year over year at all. 5% last quarter and 9% this quarter. the commercial marketplace is coming up. serious about the marketplace moving from low single-digit

growth to this quarter and 13% growth. these numbers usually proceeds by three quarter's gdp. too early to call and we get 1-1/4. liz: you also mentioned the country spends too much and we are heading for the fiscal cliff. we have major companies now, xerox, and at this moment, talk about solutions to falling off of the fiscal cliff. what is the number-1 thing you believe we need to see to avoid that? >> this answer might surprise you. my parents were both doctors. rather than the overall illness, predictability and tax policy,

and that employee, and invest in america, predictability for the business leaders is the number-1 issue. the fiscal cliff is purely the symptom facing us. if we don't deal with the underlying issues in terms of how much we spend on tax policy, pro-growth pro job generation economy we have a problem. we found the opposite as you and i talked about in london where the prime minister was pro-business and focused on how did he cut taxes and how did he make a business welcome and go to the resources in terms of the economy. and it does the same thing, providential leaders and state leaders as an example. canada is an easy place to invest and do business and we will grow there. we need to take lessons learned from our peers, key democracy in terms of how we grow business working together. liz: canada is the best place to

invest let me pin you down on this. will you hold off on hiring in the u.s.? handle you hold off on bringing new employees until the fiscal cliff question is solved? >> going back to the overall underlying a loss as opposed to the symptoms, by doing acquisitions is dramatically limited and tax policy. and wherever we acquire them, we acquire in this country is dependent on tax policy. and the ability to grow in the u.s. no matter how much we want to, an american company, probably an american company, a pro job creation tight agenda will be difficult for us to grow. liz: i want to talk about the

situation with one of the competitors out there. the chinese competitor that the u.s. government, members of mostly republican members put out this investigative report saying there are ties to chinese government too close and could hurt if they do business in the u.s. and foreign law cooperating with an investigation. that helps your company. if you get the business. my question is this. people wondered was cisco whispering in the years of many republican members and doing things, it was there any of that at all? >> there was not. one of that nature periodicals wrote that cisco is behind us. nothing could be further from the truth. if i want to do something i will tell people i will do it and other than responding to a subpoena about a who legal case we did not participate at all. there are as many democrats as

republicans on that committee who had the concerns. in terms of our ability to compete, 18 months ago, hp, juniper, the four competitors we focus on. people were concerned they were going to beat us and moving fast enough to compete against them. 18 months later we are getting shares against all of them. we are tough to compete against, we see it as a serious competitor and we see it as an ability to compete very key. part of the takeaway as after that came out in the -- we got the target out of a scene shyness so now we are balancing a little bit reminding people this is between two companies, not two countries. liz: if anything of the performance in london, you guys wired hundreds of locations and nothing went down so congratulations. good to see you. thank you for being with us. >> it is a pleasure and an honor to be with you after a record

quarter and perhaps at a time when earnings were disappointing and guidance even more disappointing, one of the companies that looks like we are swimming of the river and hopefully the river will change direction and we will benefit from it. liz: we will hold so. we will be right back. john chambers, cisco chairman and ceo.

liz: we are close to the lows of the session, let's get to nicole on the floor. what is going on? nicole: people talk about the fiscal cliff. would they talk about demand for potash and the fertilizer company mosaic to the down. it is down 3.4%. they talk about the man in the

near-term, challenge next to it is potash, that is down nearly 3%. part of it is demanded that deals with china which mosaic says they hope they will come for next year. this may be a short-term problem but it is hitting these two stocks directly here today on a day when we got hit pretty hard. we are down 185 points. over half of the names in correction mode. liz: people still need to eat. dan is with us, capital management csi 0. you said don't hide. you promised three names. look at potlatch and mosaic. >> we look at the charts there. those stocks, cycles, markets are very different and tight,

inventory depletion and restocking. i happen to think those are interesting companies to look at full backs. liz: three areas, energy and the no. one moneymaker. >> 8 ms holdings, missed the earnings estimates they do to the medicaid programs, the medicaid hmos and customers as well and a percentage of what they recover. obamacare is the law of the land. in the medicaid program. and that makes growth prospects -- [talking over each other] liz: isn't that a little rich? >> unique asset that compete against no one. everyone goes a little bit of

what they do. they don't have a lock on the states but they play a majority of the key ones on the medicaid. liz: let's cover more fraud in the health industry. energy. let's get your pick their. >> from st. mary land, a predominantly gas and domestic. it is an interesting company from here we are going to focus on domestic energy assets. this company had a few operational issues well behind them. it is a great entry point. liz: your number one money maker, it is up 10% since then. liz: i would >> >> i was nervous about it because we talk about it so many times. a lot of times you look at a company there is easy money and

the leader of the short line railroad area. using warren buffett growing to northern acquisition. wyoming acquired real america which is burlington northern, double down on the u.s. growth in u.s. and huge operating leverage from here. liz: we will watch it now. good to see you. let's look at the big board. cover the children's eyes down 200 points, well enough below 13,000 that people are concerned. the dow has fallen 100 points from the election so not a great day to lead 201 points if you are a bull. closing bell seven minutes away. you need to stick around. earnings coming up "after the bell" but coming up viable tell you what stock is the worst performer on the s&p 500 today. by the way a good percentage of s&p companies are now down 10%. so in correction territory.

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it's just common sense, from td ameritrade. liz: here's what he denied rumors can do for your stock. some arsemitruck you down, the t performer on the s&p 500 today. there you go, a one or two day chart, the stock spiked and then rumors yesterday advanced microsystems would explore and put itself up for sale to be purchased to go private. it used to be the biggest competitor to intel, but right now it is in real trouble.

stocks are on sale down nearly 200 points the dow jones industrials but we have the ceo of honeywell coming up, just in a meeting with president obama, so let's begin after the bell with david asman. david: a lot of people sit in it he started talking the market went down. i think it was much more to do with what the federal reserve was saying about when they may raise rates. they broach the subject of raising rates even though it is in the future. liz: that and possibly qe4 and people trying to blame the president. we know nicole petallides talking to all the traders and accelerating losses into the close. nicole: he said we have further to go to the downside, looking

at the technicals were not actually by the market until we were a nice pop for facebook. liz: on the down day, abercrombie and fitch came out with sales just down on fifth avenue can see there is always a line for this company. nicole: they were down 36% year-to-date after the close. today a complete turnaround saying the sales are doing well. good numbers for abercrombie. david: left the president off the hook for today's action but look at the five days since the president was reelected. it is not a good